Peter Van Hoesen - Irrational X

Peter Van Hoesen - Irrational X
When is Peter Van Hoesen finally going to do something wrong? Techno is robot music, but the Belgian producer's streak is almost too inhuman. And while he gets (and got) high marks for his debut album, Entropic City, he's one of those artists whose truest métier really is the single. There's something about the format's self-containment that really suits the guy. They're so expansive yet so confining, and he's so careful and yet so loose.

"Irrational X," it should be said, gets loosest with a remixer's involvement. Berlin's Exercise One, whose label this is released on, bring the goods with a bouncier, slightly grainier rethink: it's buoyant where the original is a chatterbox in deep freeze. Lots of little touches—a very gradual drying out of the timbre between the fifth and sixth minute, endless variations on the basic pummel. Exercise One replace thrills with comfort, two worthwhile things to have. The "Slowmix" (which isn't that slow) is more minimal than the original and more hypnotic than Exercise One's remix, and it builds more than either. It's Van Hoesen making sure we know whose single this is. No need to worry about that.